Mumbai to resume vaccination drive from today after 2-day suspension

“With the receipt of vaccine doses, the Covid-19 vaccination campaign will resume in Mumbai from tomorrow, Saturday, August 21, 2021. The stock of vaccines received by the corporation includes 150,000 doses of Covishield and 10,240 doses of Covaxin,” the BMC said on Friday.

Vaccination drive against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is set to resume in Mumbai from Saturday, two days after being halted due to shortage of doses, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said. In a statement, the BMC said that it had received 160,240 vaccine doses on Thursday night, which was distributed among all municipal and vaccination centres on Friday.

On August 19 and 20, vaccination drives were suspended across Maharashtra’s capital city for a third consecutive week. (HT file photo)

“With the receipt of vaccine doses, the Covid-19 vaccination campaign will resume in Mumbai from tomorrow, Saturday, August 21, 2021. The stock of vaccines received by the corporation includes 150,000 doses of Covishield and 10,240 doses of Covaxin,” the Mumbai civic body said on Friday.

The BMC also pointed out that the entire eligible population of Mumbai could be vaccinated either by the end of this year or at the start of 2022. At present, it can administer vaccines to 150,000 people per day.

On August 19 and 20, vaccination drives were suspended across Maharashtra’s capital city for a third consecutive week. Earlier, inoculations were halted on August 12, 13 and 14. On Thursday, the BMC said that residents were being constantly informed about the vaccination drive on the basis of the availability of stock and urged them to cooperate with the administration amid the shortage.

Mumbai has so far recorded 740,608 Covid-19 cases and 15,941 deaths due to the coronavirus disease. On Friday, the city saw a slight increase in its daily tally as 319 people were detected as Covid-19 positive while six more patients succumbed to the viral disease.

Authorities in Maharashtra have administered 51,904,037 vaccine doses to people of which 38,228,399 have received the first dose and the remaining 13,675,638 are fully vaccinated.

Across India, the cumulative vaccine coverage exceeded 576.1 million after 3,636,043 doses were administered in the last 24 hours, the Union health ministry said on Saturday.